Miasma
by 1755
Summary: He's still holding your hand – remember this, goddamnit, keep it safe – and he uses it to pull you closer. Isn't it a wonderful, terrifying thing to know someone loves you? / A study on key moments of Remus Lupin's life. RL/SB, RL/NT
1. July 1978

_Warnings for all chapters: Drugs, (references to) sex, rock n roll. Curse words, secondary character death. Well, it's Marauder's era. You should know that already._

 _Reviews welcome, as always._

* * *

"I could have been a chef, probably."

You are both lying on the floor, _his_ floor, and you watch him through the delicious haze of marijuana and nicotine. You take a slow drag, feel the warmth engulf you, and you embrace it as it spreads through your lungs. You cough as you pass the joint to him – it's getting stubby now, the cinders are racing toward your fingers with each long inhale – and you laugh as you let the smoke pour out of your body.

"You can't cook, Pads," you say. You know this because you have been living here for the past month, eating greasy takeaway and whatever Alice and Dorcas leave you, sleeping and not-sleeping, but mostly waiting.

"Never needed to learn before, bless those elves. I'm just saying," he pauses, drags the last of the joint, and you reach out to touch the muscles in his throat that go taut, "if I'd had the chance, I could have been a chef."

His neck-skin is soft but for a long raised blemish almost-too-close to his jugular. You run your finger across is, over and over and over again, as if your touch could make it disappear. Ironic, when it was borne from your teeth—or at least, from teeth that belong to you.

"Why a chef?" And you've always been so keen on hearing his thoughts, his motivations – it is your downfall and your obsession all at once. You've never understood how his mind works (and you never will), but that's only made you want to even more. You think that maybe you understand him, or at least, you _know_ him, better than anyone else.

"I'm not bad at Potions. That's all cooking is, yeah? Potions. Chemistry, right?" He looks at you now, and your hand follows the curve of his neck as it moves. "What about you, Moony?"

"You know I hated Potions." You know that's not what he meant, but you just want to hear his voice some more before the waiting comes to an end and you must leave. Any day now, really. And besides, you don't really know what to answer. He laughs, and it envelops you like a warm fog, mingling with the swirling grey above you.

"I meant, you know, as a job. What would you like to have been?" You laugh too, but only because he is, not because it's funny.

"We're not dead, you know. We're only 18." He takes your hand, and, almost too casually, raises it to his lips and kisses it. You focus on it – you're always so focussed when you're stoned – and you try to remember it. Any day, now.

"In case you haven't noticed, O Great Realist o' Mine, there's a war going on." He's still holding your hand – remember this, goddamnit, keep it safe – and he uses it to pull you closer. So close – don't forget this, whatever you do – you can smell his skin. It smells like – don't close your eyes, you're going to need to remember this – sweat and stale sex and your soap. "And who knows how long it'll last?"

Only he can speak of war like this, easily. But you know that he is, really, a very good actor, so good that sometimes you remember what it means to be a Black, and that he could have very well been a Slytherin. Mostly though, the smile makes you forget.

"Oh, I suspect a librarian or something of the sort," you say, and it startles you now how you've never really given it much thought. You, who have always thought of everything. But you are not supposed to dream of futures you'll never have and never did have; you are not supposed to think of possibilities. No one hires werewolves.

"Why Moony, that's perfect. Perfectly boring," he says, and yet, you are not supposed to have this either, this beautifully terrifying man-child-soldier who kisses you when you ask and even when you don't ask. No one loves werewolves either, not like this anyway, not like sharing joints and cigarettes and showers, not like lying on the floor listening to a Bee Gees record and thinking of possibilities.

And yet.

You kiss him instead of answering, and it burns slow and long like the drug-induced miasma you quietly revel in.

"You could be a Minister. Finance, or Defence, or… or Minister for Intoxicating Substances." He kisses you back, and brings his arms around you like he did that first time, back in another lifetime.

"That's not real," and you laugh. Your breath must be tickling his nose because he scrunches it up. You kiss it, too.

"Is too, it's on Ministry posters at the Leaky."

You laugh. "What about Magical Creatures?" As much as you wish it, there is nothing in the world that make you forget that you could never be a politician, not even Sirius Black. He frowns (even that is enough to take your breath away).

"Moons, the full isn't for another two weeks. What's wrong?" Because of course, as much as you pride yourself on knowing Sirius Black's thoughts and interests and pet-peeves and favourite words and tics and fears, he knows just as many of yours too, and then some.

"I love you," you say, and you don't know if it's an answer or a way to avoid this question too. The words force themselves out anyway – it's not the first time you've whispered them, and certainly not the first time you've meant them, but it's the first time they've _needed_ to be said.

"I know." He kisses you again. God, you will never tire of him kissing you. Is it possible to survive on this alone? "And you know I love you too." Of course you know. You know and oh, isn't it a wonderful thing to know that someone loves you? Isn't it a beautiful, perfect, wonderful thing? You know, but you almost wish you didn't, because maybe then it wouldn't be so hard, and you wouldn't have had the chance – no, the _fortune_ to think of possibilities.

He pulls you closer still, and you don't mind, not at all. This is what you've wanted all along, is it not? You've wanted to become part of him. You want him to become part of you.

"I know you're leaving." For all the air and smoke and skin and breath surrounding you, you forget how to work your lungs for a second. "To go live with the werewolves." God, he doesn't know how much he's hurting you. "Pete overheard Dumbledore telling you about Greyback, and I just… put two and two together."

You still cannot speak. There isn't enough oxygen in the world that can tell you what to say.

"I'm not angry," he says (words you didn't know you needed to hear), and all of a sudden the air pushes its way out of your cigarette-blackened lungs. His mouth is on yours again (a mouth you had never known you needed to kiss), and then his hands are in your hair. You never used to like being touched, and you think probably it's because you'd never known what a touch like this could feel like – like all your favourite songs and like Shakespeare and like tea with a bit of milk. When did you become so dependent on him, when did you started needing him, when did you stop being able to breathe on your own?

You are going to have to learn how to live all over again.

"When?" he asks.

"Any day now," you say.

"Where?"

"I don't know." And even if you did, Dumbledore has you sworn to secrecy—you agreed to it, because God knows you would tell Sirius if you could and then he would try to find you (oh, it's a wonderful, grim thing to know someone loves you).

"How long?"

Too long. Anything is too long.

"I don't know. A few months." You bury your face in his neck, your scarred face in his scarred neck, and you forget, for a second, that you are lying on old linoleum softened by your high, and you think, well, I could just not go, right? I could stay here forever, couldn't I?

"Months, Moony," he whispers, and he is still stroking your hair, and you remember that no, you must go. You have to because if you can do anything, anything at all to protect him (and the others too, but mostly him), then you will. You pull back and look at him. _Jesus_ , but he is a monochromatic work of art, with his black hair and charcoal eyes and the silver ring piercing his eyebrow (one that he'd gotten in a pique of Black rebellion last summer).

"I could be a professor, maybe," you say, because you don't want this to end, you want to forget again; you don't want to go any day now. He smiles.

"Professor Lupin. I like that," and now he's kissing you again, and the record's stopped but you don't care, you don't need music to fill this silence. "As long as it's not something awful like History of Magic."

"I don't think Binns is going anywhere anytime soon, so you don't have to worry." He laughs. You bathe in it; allow it to soak into your weary, scar-ridden body.

"I wish you didn't have to go, Moony," and those words slice you like a silver knife, because they are so close to a question, and you know whatever he asks you will say yes. You stay still, not wanting to disrupt this, but it's late and you both have training with Mad-Eye tomorrow, so soon you are going to have to sleep.

You've never hated sleeping before.

"Do we have any crisps?" he asks suddenly, and you laugh, because he is perfect, sometimes more child than man (and sometimes more soldier than child). He kisses you again before rising painfully from the floor, leaving you to roll on your back and look at the ceiling, which is oddly ornate for such an old, dingy flat. It fits though, you think, and then: maybe it wouldn't be so bad to leave, as long as you can come back here. As long as nothing else changes and there are no new scars on his body to discover when you return (a fool's dream, but then again, only a fool would fall in love with Sirius Black). As long as he will still be here, with fat, smelly joints to share and new records and crisps in the cupboards. As long as he will still kiss you.

You are not supposed to feel hope like this.


	2. December 1978

You feel older when you return, finally, to the new headquarters. The Order's probably moved six or seven times since you left five months ago, so you're not surprised when you don't recognize where you are. The only way you'd found the place at all was because you found Fenwick at the Leaky last night, and he whispered directions into your ear. You ponder whether or not you should tell Mad-Eye that he trusted you so easily, especially considering where you've been for the past five damned months. Frankly, you are surprised the wards even let you in, but you suppose maybe Dumbledore had thought of you before putting them up.

There are no boots at the door of the cliff-side log cabin, but that doesn't surprise you. You are afraid to take yours off too now. There must be someone though, because your ears pick up soft vibrations from somewhere in the house, and you smell something delicious. Christ, but your senses have sharpened since you left.

You let your dirt-encrusted rucksack thump to the wooden floor before you follow your new wolf-nose – you are hungry. You've been hungry for five months (you never really knew hunger before, but now it feels never-ending).

The place isn't very big, but you suppose it doesn't really need much, only a few beds, a kitchen and some places to sit. Books and papers and old Prophets are scattered throughout the well-used living room and you grab one at random – you've had no news at all these past few months.

You try to not to think about whose obituaries could be hidden between the pages of the newspapers around you.

You take timorous, soft steps across the room and reach the attached kitchen, where an enormous pot of what you suspect to be stew is simmering on the oven, a spoon lazily stirring it by itself. No one is around, so you rummage quietly in the cupboards to find what you need, a bowl and a spoon big enough for your appetite.

Suddenly, you are on the floor with an unfamiliar man trapped beneath you and your wand pointed at his throat. Your vision is greying around the edges and your breath comes out as a feral snarl. Every forest-toned muscle in your body is tense, and you know this means you are ready to fight.

You don't remember how you got there, and that frightens you enough to startle you back to who you were. You jump away from your victim as your vision clears, and you realise the man is speaking, but the blood pumping through your veins is so loud you cannot hear. The shame settles like dust on your skin as you realise that this man isn't a stranger at all, but that you have become the strange one.

"Sirius?" you manage, as you push yourself up against the countertop, trying to distance yourself from what you have just done. He has stopped speaking, but you think maybe you could hear him now, so you wait.

"Moony, what the hell are you playing at?" he says, and it jolts you because sometimes you forget you are both wolf and man, not just wolf, and certainly not just man. He is breathing hard, like you. "Didn't you recognize me?"

You look, and of course it is Sirius, although a different Sirius than the one you remember. This Sirius has purple-dark circles under his eyes and a shirt that hangs on his shoulders too loosely. This Sirius has a bandage on his upper right arm and a long not-quite-healed cut on his other. His black hair, though always long and shaggy, has become unkempt in a way that isn't on purpose. He smells of dog-fur and muddy marshes after rain and like the feeling of opening your trunk in your familiar dorm after summer holidays, like the feeling of coming home.

You suppose you do too (well, the dog and the mud, at least).

"I… I recognize you now," you say, your voice shaking in a way that the wolf inside you would never allow, so you know then that you have forced him to hide. You reach out your arm to touch him but drop it again, unsure of yourself. "I'm sorry, Pads. I have no idea what came over me."

(That is a kind-of lie, and you feel then that it is the first of many.)

"It's alright, Moons. I guess months of living with werewolves makes you jumpy, right?" You wonder, just then, if this Sirius could still be yours. "Come here," he says, opening his arms wide to you. "When did you get back?"

Cautiously, you embrace him. His injured arms hold you tighter than you remember ever being held before, and you think, well, if he can't be yours, maybe you could still be his.

"Just now. Merlin, am I glad to be back," you breathe into his hair (sparser than it was before you left). You reach up to put your arms around his neck, slowly, slowly, _slowly_ , and you feel chapped lips pressing on your collarbone. He always loved your collarbones, he always said they were sexy, and you could never take a compliment so you just laughed and shook your head until he stopped stalking and started kissing.

Kissing. Do you remember how to do that? It's been so long – try to remember what it felt like. Or don't; maybe try to replicate it instead.

You pull your head back from his shoulder to look at him; the tears welling up in his storm-grey eyes tell you it's okay to lean in and kiss him, touch your lips to his, so you do. You do and it's good and the lachrymal saltiness seeps into your mouths but you don't stop, you've waited too long to stop on account of a few tears. You wonder why he is crying, and then you wonder why _you're_ crying, because neither of you cried when you left, and this, right now, is supposed to be much happier. You don't wonder for long – you just keep kissing him. Tenderly, so the wolf knows not to return. Softly, so Sirius understands. Hungrily, because _fuck_ , you've missed this, you've been so hungry. Not goddamn war should ever keep you from this again.

He pulls back, too soon but also just soon enough because you hear footsteps and low voices in the next room over, coming closer.

"Don't ever do that again, you fucker. The jumping, and the leaving," he says, laughing, wiping away the wetness on his and your cheeks. "I fucking missed you."

You nod. You don't think you could put into words how much truer that is for you than for him. "I'll do my best." It's not enough, but he laughs and kisses you again as the door opens to hoots and hollers.

"Oi! Who's Sirius got attached to his face?" a female voice you don't recognize yells amidst the laughter. Strange. You never imagined that this kind of laughter, bright and joyful, could survive in this place. You start to pull away, try to disentangle your arms, but he just holds you tighter still, still kissing you, lifting his right hand up to flip the onlookers off. You're uncomfortable, but not enough to stop drinking him in, tasting him like a starved man. You start to laugh too, and that's when he pulls away, not far enough to show your face (it's evident he wants to make a show of it), but just enough to throw back a mocking retort.

"Jealous, McKinnon?"

He winks at you, and you still love him, you know that now. You don't know why you ever doubted it, even though it's only here that you admit you ever did.

"Pads, we eat in here! Don't make us sick!" You recognize Peter's voice, and that's enough to make you stop playing Sirius' game and pull away for good. He pouts like a Black but moves out of your way regardless, brushing your calloused hand.

"Moony!" Peter shouts, and pushes his way past the few others crowding the doorway to hug you. He is still warm and soft and plump like you remember, and the familiarity catches in your throat so you are unable to speak lest the tears fall again.

"Pads, you sly dog. Wouldn't tell us who it was he was pining for, sitting out on the lawn sighing at the moon all night long," the woman named McKinnon says from the door. You can see Dorcas, blond curls cascading around her head like a halo, next to her, and Frank and Alice too, and your amative heart can barely take this. Thank the stars and the sun and the sky and the wind that James and Lily aren't here yet, you wouldn't be able to take it (don't thank the moon; never thank the moon).

"I did not! Besides, I'll have you know that a Black has never pined a day in his life. As for the part about the sly dog, well…" and suddenly, Sirius has taken your attack from earlier but turned it into something beautiful, because a big black dog has brought you to the ground to lick your scarred, travel-weary face, still salty from the crying. The forgotten newspaper crinkles under your back as you squirm under the beast. The parallel is not lost on you, and neither is the unexpected lightness of the mutt, but your friends begin to laugh again and move about the kitchen, gathering food and utensils and water, as you are being nudged, licked and thoroughly loved by the dog.

Is it wrong to feel hope like this?


	3. July 1979

The wedding passes quickly in a haze of too-loud laughter, too-quiet silences and whisky. Sirius and Marlene had thought it silly to have such an event in the midst of wartime, and Mad-Eye believed it to be downright dangerous, but you know what it's like to have something terrible try to consume you. You know that sometimes happiness is the only way to fight back, even if that happiness is painfully fleeting and the church you sat in earlier is the same used for funerals of friends and soldiers (though "soldiers" and "friends" are not mutually exclusive in your life anymore).

Alice looks beautiful in white and Frank looks happy and the July night is hot, too hot for dancing in full robes but there you are, swaying softly with Sirius in your arms, your head on his shoulder. The barn in which you are dancing is dusty but twinkles with floating candles and perpetually falling ruby rosepetals.

You don't remember the last time he let you hold him, and you don't know when the next will be.

He clings to your chest closely, your shirt balled up in his sweaty, trembling fists. You don't even have the heart to tell him that it will wrinkle like you usually would, because you've never seen him weak like this and besides, there are spells that can fix your shirt. It's not like it was that expensive anyway. The band begins another slow one as the other couples spin past, Alice and Frank and James and Lily and the always-laughing Dorcas with Caradoc, who is to leave on a mission tomorrow for two months.

"Padfoot," you whisper into his ear, "what's wrong?" You are still going round in slow circles but your mind is able to push away the music and listen to only him. You are, after all, just a wolf in a man's robes. You focus on his breathing.

"You know what's wrong," he says, and there is Black spitefulness in his voice you had almost forgotten he possessed. "You got the owl this morning, I didn't. Who was it from? Why didn't you tell me he's missing?"

A petal falls on his shoulder and his hands twist your shirt tighter. You suppose it's because he has nothing else to hold onto.

"I was going to tell you after the wedding," you breathe, and even though it's the truth, it feels like a lie, like fire spitting from your lungs, because it is not a good truth, and at best, it is only half of the truth. "How did you find out?" You think maybe he might rip off the buttons on your shirt. You'd let him, of course.

"One of his baby Death Eater friends cornered me at the shops this morning. Must be pretty desperate if they want to talk to the likes of me," he spits.

"I'm sorry," you say, holding him tighter still. Why has he not left your arms yet? (And isn't that the question you have been asking yourself for years?) "If I had known you would be this upset, I would have told you sooner."

You remember now, though not quite soon enough, that his tongue has always been silver like a blade, it's just that you were always distracted by the gold of his tie.

You are dizzy, and you try to convince yourself it is because of the dancing.

"I haven't lost a fucking sock, Remus. He's my brother." It cuts you. You should have known, of course you should have known. His knuckles are white against the grey of your shirt, and you notice that the music has stopped, and the others have left the dance floor. The dust swirls around you, sparkling in the lights, and you hear champagne flutes clinking together somewhere behind you. Soft laughter, idle chatter. Peter whistling a tune, James joking with Marlene. Mad-Eye's wooden leg thumping near the bar. Dorcas' sweet peal of giggles, the smack of an exaggerated kiss. Sounds you have grown accustomed to, though you know that you, of all people, should never let anything become familiar.

Yet you have. You have because you are human (or at least, mostly), and it comforts you, just like Sirius' hands and tongue and arms and words and paws and tail have comforted you for so long (or at least, they used to).

"I'm sorry, Pads," you repeat. "I'm sorry. He'll be okay, you know he's smart."

The problem with half-truths is that they are also half-lies.

"Christ, Remus, he's only eighteen," and his hands finally let go of the wrinkled, sweaty cloth, "and if he was really that smart, he would never have gotten involved with them in the first place. Answer me, now. Who told you?"

Don't tell him. You can't tell him. You know you can't. But… you want to, if only because you want him.

Here's a question: do you want him bad enough to share your secret? And which secret? The one where you are Dumbledore's favourite and youngest spy-master, that you've got werewolves and agents reporting to you? Or the one where they use codes and spells that Sirius invented with you years ago, when war was just a stupid, far-off, glorious dream, back when maps and essays and boy-kisses and forbidden, clumsily-rolled joints filled your days? Or the one where Lily is helping you find a place to live, a place of your own?

"I can't say. I'm sorry."

He steps away. Smiles. Fuck, he's beautiful. Fuck.

"You're always sorry."

After everything, it's almost as if this is what you'd hoped for all along.


	4. September 1996

You know, as certain as you know you love her, that she would do it, if you asked, and probably even if you didn't ask.

You consider it, but just once. The September air is still summer-hot, almost too hot to be touching like this, but there you are, your old scarred hands all over her body in your rickety old bed in your rickety old cottage, blankets and clothes strewn over the worn wooden floor. Oh, but she is lovely, her skin flushed with laughter and orgasm, her body soft in ways you never imagined you could love.

She reaches over to the bedside table and her fingers find a joint you'd rolled earlier, pushing your books aside. You'd stopped smoking long ago (after he was taken) but recently you've been at it again, because it is something young people do, and Dora is young, unforgettably so. You want to feel young too, for her.

But then, as she lights the tip with her wand and inhales lazily, the smoke obscures her face for a second, and you think, well, I could ask her. It wouldn't be hard; she is his cousin after all, and sometimes, in certain dull lamplights like these, you see traces of him in her face, his high cheekbones and in the way her nose curves, and you're almost certain she isn't doing it on purpose. Once, she turned her hair black for supper at headquarters, and you almost spit your gin and tonic onto your plate when she sat down, because you hadn't seen that precise shade in over a year (or fifteen and a half, if you took into account the grey strands that Azkaban gave him as a parting gift).

She is young. It's a fact you cannot seem to separate from the rest of her, and you find it hidden in corners of her mind you didn't think you would. You find it tucked away in her twinkling eyes walk by the twins' joke shop in London. You hear her youth while she giggles and gossips with Ginny and Hermione, who are really much closer in age to her than she is to him, and it leaves you breathless when she argues with you about everything and nothing (she loves the fight, while you love the debate). She is quick to anger but quicker to laugh, and her mind flits from subject to subject so rapidly you cannot even keep up.

Then, too, she reminds you of him, whose name you hardly ever speak anymore, and at first, you thought that maybe that's why you loved her.

"Shall I make eggs?" She rolls over and hands you the roll, her delicate breast touching your arm like a kind of gentle _hello_. You smile, taking the billowing offering, and the warm familiarity of the act seeps into your weathered, forest-hardened and battle-weary bones.

"Eggs? It's nearly midnight, Dora." You laugh, the haze of drugs settling on your mind like an old song you'd nearly forgotten, but whose lyrics you can still sing with certainty.

"We're going to get hungry. I'll make bacon too," she says.

As quickly as you think of asking her to mold her features into his, you just as rapidly dismiss it. You know now that you do not love her because of him. She is, well, she is different than he was, of course. Clumsier, but more thoughtful, and infinitely kinder. She takes up as much space in a room as he did, but not for trying, just for being, and for that, you admire her.

"Ah. Bacon. An offer no man can refuse."

And Sirius, well, Sirius was young too when you loved him (and, you are certain now, when he loved you), but he was still young when you didn't love him, or at least, not in the same way as before, for grey hair did not come with the maturity you had foolishly expected him to have. And there is the stark difference between she and him: you see her grow every day, while he had wanted Harry to be James and Ginny to be a Lily and Remus to be his Remus, his Moony, all over again.

You kiss her before inhaling again, and oh, there is no better feeling in the world than skin touching skin, even when it is sticky with sweat and come, even when your skin is tattered and wrinkled and has long, raised blemishes like pink paint on a canvas. You see the moon peeking from behind clouds through the window, and though you've always felt it speak to you, you finally have nothing left to answer.

She giggles and blows smoke into your mouth, the tips of her hair colouring purple.

Maybe you were never supposed to have this, but you do now, and you will do anything to keep it.

Really, you never could have even hoped for this.


End file.
